The Sea Harrier, a multirole, carrier bourn, V/STOL fighter. One of the last solely British build and designed fighters. Serving as a first rate fighter for almost 60 years with the British and Indian Navies. It was truly a capable, agile, and advanced aircraft of its time.
However in game all we have is a low effort copy paste of a half baked Gr.1 VTOL gimmick that gaijin wanted to add back in 2020. Every single Harrier 1 has the exact same flight model and general performance. Even the Radar equipped and modified Sea Harriers have the same inaccurately modeled Gr.3 HUD. Despite the aircrafts role necessitating the need for air intercept capabilities and radar tracking for dogfighting.
Airframe:
The Sea Harrier is a Modified Gr.3 or it was supposed to be, but after needing to replace all magnesium parts with more corrosion resistant materials it ended up being fairly different to its RAF cousin. Still managing to weight only a few hundred pounds more despite having a fully new avionics suite, radar, HUD, and a 11 in raised cockpit for improved view aft of the plane. It retained the same general design of engine only modified again for corrosion resistance and being renamed the Mk.104 vs the Mk.103 in the Gr.3 with the Mk.102 and Mk.101 being in the Gr.1A and Gr.1. Sea Harriers had more powerful reaction control to help keep the plane stable in the hover and lastly the Sea Harriers had 2 degrees more of tailplane travel helping increase maneuverability and make up for the longer nose.
HUD:
The Sea Harrier was equipped with a Smith Industries HUD with commonalties to the RAF Harrier HUDs but programed with air combat in mind. In game all we have is the basic ground attack HUD of the Gr.3 and are supposed to use it for an air combat role.
This is a bit from an ICAS article about development of the Sea Harriers NAVHARS and HUD integration system.
Below I’ve sourced what a “standby” display would look like when it gives you a radar lock the circle in the middles tells distance to intercept, top left is radar altitude and true airspeed, top right is pressure setting and time to intercept, middle left and right is same as Gr.3 AOA left and Climb right just with a digital altimeter, frying pan circle is a C scope display of the locked target it shows altitude and direction(vector) in regards to the pilots view. Triangle is Sidewinder lock marker. The I bars as seen above and below the frying pan where “directions” the pilot had to keep them even either side of the pan and it would advice an intercept path but could be changed if a different aspect of intercept was desired i.e forward to the side or just side. Below to the left is Mach number, middle is heading, right is altitude.
This is the Air combat mode. We can see a Frs.1 claiming 2 victories over an F-15 first with guns second with missile. In combat mode we can see that most of the flight functions remain the same speed, altitude, pressure, and heading. The one change to note is the time to intercept has become S042 or Span=042 feet for the radar gunsight to get targeting for the F-15s wingspan of 42 Feet. The gun lead indicator is similar in function to the Tornado AtA mode but has a smooth line and a big circle where the bullets will hit.
Radar and Raster display:
Operated in both PPI and B-scan modes and had a Back-up HUD display. In game it has its B scope pattern but is missing its vector pans. The contacts should appear as squares with lines telling there vector. I have added a picture of the Radar display screen and it also features frequency agility to help defeat clutter.
Unfortunately more information about this Radar are hard to come by so more information might be added later as more is discovered.
To simplify the different radar scan types here is this.
